The present invention relates to a thin, high capacity absorbent core having a suitable level of stiffness for use in absorbent articles.
Disposable absorbent articles such as catamenial pads, sanitary napkins, pantyliners, adult incontinence pads and garments, diapers, and children's training pants are designed to be worn adjacent to the wearer's body to absorb body fluids such as menses, blood, urine and other bodily excretions. Users of absorbent articles include menstruating women, infants, children undergoing toilet training, and urine and bowel incontinent adults, among others. This broad user base with varying absorbency requirements has resulted in development of a broad range of commercial products to meet consumer absorbency needs.
Incontinence users experience important differences from menstruating women and the use of commercially available feminine care products may not satisfy their specific needs. Most incontinence users (adults, infants, and toilet training children, for example) require a product that can absorb and retain urine over an extended period of time. Since feminine care products are specifically designed to absorb and retain menses, many do not contain superabsorbents. Superabsorbents are capable of retaining large quantities of body fluid, such as urine, but it is known that they can impede the flow of menses. Without the presence of superabsorbents, many feminine care products do not have the fluid retention capacity needed by incontinence users. The presence of superabsorbents in incontinence products allows the liquid urine to be locked away so the product feels dry to the wearer. Many incontinence users tend to expel only a few drops of urine at a time and therefore they tend to wear their products over a longer time period. Others, including infants, toilet training children, and many incontinent adults can expel large quantities of urine ranging up to several hundred grams per urination and accordingly require substantial absorbent capacity in their absorbent garment. Another reason many adult incontinence users wear pantyliners or ultra thin catamenial pads for incontinence is that most incontinence products are thick and bulky rather than being thin and discreet. Incontinence users have a strong psychological reason for not wanting other people to know that they suffer from incontinence. There is, therefore, a need for thinner incontinence products that can provide a wide range of absorbent capacity to meet the wearer's specific needs.
Because of the above concerns, there is a need to produce a relatively inexpensive, thin incontinence pad, incontinence garment, or pantyliner, having a thickness of less than about 10 millimeters, desirably less than about 7 to about 8 millimeters and more desirably less than about 5 millimeters, which can absorb and retain from between about 20 grams to about 1200 grams of urine, or more.
Now, a relatively inexpensive, thin absorbent article has been invented that can do just that. This absorbent article contains an absorbent core formed from two or more layers of material, at least one of which contains a superabsorbent.